Ghost Dad....I mean....Town, Ghost Town.

There is no one here today.

The student body is the definition of a fair weather friend. When things are nice and sunny, the campus is a swarming mess of people. When it's raining and cold, there is no one here.

In my experience, Tuesdays are the busiest day (this is based on it always been harder to find a car park on a Tuesday) yet today the place is just empty. But it is about week five, and week five marks the begining of the end for most second semester subjects.

Attendance drops, interest levels wane, medical certificates flourish. The swarming mess of sunny days passed dilutes into a hardcore group of nonattendees, and those down and out souls who are lured to the darkside, to the library.

The only warm place on campus is the library. The moment the automatic doors open and the temperate 24 degree climate controlled environment seeps out, washing over your cold and weary limbs, an urge overcomes you, demanding you get your heat fix within it's book filled walls.

The library is warm for no reason other than to encourage you to come inside. It's all a ruse, they just want you to learn.

Fun Chubby

Back to the grindstone this week.

*daydreams an existance that doesnt involve university*

Bill Bryson Sux 4 EVA!

Since no one wants to hear about my recent sojourn to the Tropical Far North, I'll spare you the details, other than to say that Gary Coleman doesn't have a scratch on the tan I am weilding at the moment.

I also wont tell you about the troupe of Karate competitors - who to a person cannot pick up,and also can't take a joke about Karate - No, I know it's Karate, I was JOKING when I said TAI CHI! I'll spare you the intimate details of The Woolshed - the Tropical Far North's answer to a meat market. I'll also avoid mentioning the words 'relaxing' 'hot' 'blue skies' 'rainy Melbourne' 'sun' and'local inbreds'.

I will however remind you that I have a MOUNTAIN of work to do when I get home, it's not like The Student doesn't suffer for his art you know!

OverDue

I’m making a very poor start to the semester look very good.

In other facets of my life, I’m articulate and knowledgeable. I display a knack for retaining random snippets of information and using them to good effect when the moment calls.

But at uni I seem to glaze over the moment text is placed in front of me, and I’m particularly having trouble retaining information at the moment. The beginning of the semester is this Shock And Awe style barrage of information, as four subject supervisors dedicate ten minutes of the first lecture to telling the assembled education victims that:

“There is a learning curve in this subject, things may not make sense immediately, but by about week 8, everything falls into place.”

Eight weeks is a long time to spend scratching your head wondering what a subject is about; eight weeks is a very long time to spend scratching your head wondering what FOUR subjects are about.

In reality, I have no option but to just deal with it™, because as I tell people who ask me how I’m going at uni…

“Okay. I'd like to leave, but I’m that far in that I can’t stop now.”

Joke

Heard the one about the guy who drives an hour to uni just to pick up a course guide that he has organised a lecturer to pin to their door, just to get to uni and find that it isn't there, thereby negating the whole point of even coming?

Oh yeah, it's REAL funny.

..and the sky is grey.

It's brutal at uni at the moment. My university is a bleak place to be when it's wet and cold. The library affords the only relief from the cold - a cruel ploy to sucker students into learning.

Right now Melbourne, like a lot of the state, is in the midst of a cold snap that saw harried city cased workers looking skyward yesterday as the bureau of meteorol...meteol....weather offered odds of 4/10 for snow falling in the city. Other parts of the state were blanketed in snow, and areas like Ballarat (pictured below) snagged decent, and evidently photogenic, falls.



Half way between the car and my tute today I discovered just how 'waterproof' my new jacket is, as the rain hammered me and several on campus students scurrying between under cover areas.

In the midst of all this, it might be worth pointing out that as of the middle of next week, I'll be heading here:



..for a week of reading a book, drinking by the pool, and lapping up the sun.

In the meantime, I have to hand in the three assignments that are due during that week by this coming Tuesday.

I am like SO hard done by.

BLAH!

Politics is back baby, and not much has changed since the first semester of 2003 when I first (actually it was the second time) I tackled it.

Politics is a lot harder to study than it sounds. For the most part the subject matter is dry and wordy.

The lectures usually aren't that bad, and the one think that hasn't changed about the lectures for me in the Old Politics Lady Who Refuses to Die(tm).

Old Politics Lady Who Refuses to Die(tm) has been a rather vocal fixture of politics lectures for a while now, showing no fear of the disapproving look, Old Politics Lady Who Refuses to Die(tm) deems fit to pipe up with a comment on the lecture whenever she likes.

During last weeks two hour lecture, she piped up twice with inane commentary on random topics of discussion. She also loves a "waiting to enter the lecture hall chat about random shit for the five minutes preceding the beginning of the lecture", huge fan of that.

Perhaps the more disconcerting thing about the lecture was the 'Year 12 Formal Planning Committee' sitting behind me. Comprising of overly tanned cute brunette, skinny blonde with ugly fringe and straw textured hair, and shortish blonde with an unfortunate head not dis-similar to former channel 7 newsreader Anne Foreward's, they formed a vapid trinity of boring that sucked the humble out of the room.

Highlighted by the dazzling array of highlighters (highlighting passages has always been the very lazy, very poor cousin of taking notes) spread across their desk, and the BIG FUCK OFF LAW BOOK -

"Hey. HEY. I study law. LOOK HOW BIG THIS BOOK IS! It's LARGE. Don't let my solarium addled skin fool you, I must be MAD SMART."

- needlessly sitting next to the brunette, they couldn't be less interested in politics or more interested in bar night.

The best bit about politics is that the exams are only worth 30%, and not 70 like they are in business. Hoo Fucking Ray.

Say it aint so...

The horror.

Link.

"But hopes for a smooth transition went awry last week when news of Trioli's departure from 774 became common knowledge among her colleagues at the Melbourne station. ABC management denied Trioli was moving to Sydney. Trioli declined to answer questions when contacted yesterday."

She isn't returning my calls either!